My Hair: The Ultimate Accessory

I was motivated to write this based on an experience the I had the other day. I was at the store grabbing a beverage and I saw a woman who I had seen from time to time. We were ‘Hi! How are you?’ Friends at most. It had been a little while since we’d seen one another and our conversation went like this…

Lady: Hey there! I haven’t seen you in a while.
Me: it has been a minute.
Lady: I see you changed your hair. You decided to go blonde? *side eye*
Me: I’ve probably had every color in the spectrum but I always come back to blonde. It’s my favorite.
Lady: I’m not sure I like it.
Me: To each, his own.
Lady: You should’ve gone brown or even black.
Me: hmmmm…perhaps you should pick one of those colors when you get your hair done. I will continue to do me.

There is a song by India Arie that says “I am not my hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within”. I love and live by this ideology. I am not defined by my physical attributes, things that I was given by God; nature. In the game of life, my skin, hair, eyes, body shape are all just part of the uniform that I was issued.
Unfortunately, people don’t mind giving you their opinion about the way you wear your ‘uniform’; the clothing you choose, how you style your hair and even how you should feel about your skin. I find that as a black woman, I am judged most harshly by other black women. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard ‘She would be pretty is she wasn’t so dark’ or ‘Why don’t you straighten your hair? It would be much prettier if it was straight’.
I choose to shake it off when people have something to say a out how I present myself to the world, especially as it pertains to my hair. I choose to see my hair as an accessory. I color it, cut it, fluff it, spike it and use it to accentuate my look. I recently cut it and bleached it and I have never felt sexier.
My motto for life…love me for who I am or leave me alone.